


Colours

by jemejem



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Canon-Typical Violence, Colours, Halsey - Freeform, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 10:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11918841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemejem/pseuds/jemejem
Summary: Colours were splashed across your skin at another being's touch: They were the colour of your soul.Neil's was blue, but no one knew that. No one was going to know.





	Colours

**he was red,**  
and he liked me, cause i was blue 

_(directly inspired by the song)_

 

Neil was blue.   
He was very good at hiding both things that betrayed it: His eyes, covered by a thin film of plastic and making them brown, causing the entire world to be of a brown tint. He was used so seeing in sepia, though: He only took the contacts out after he’d laid down in bed, facing the wall. 

It had been a long year, and this was the first time Neil had slept on a proper mattress with an actual bed frame. Matt, who was tall and overbearingly friendly, slept underneath him. Seth, the elusive and tempered shadow, slept on the bed adjacent to the opposite wall. 

Matt was lilac, and Seth was a dull, greyish green. 

No one knew what colour Neil was, and no one was going to know. He would leave before October, before things became too close for Neil’s liking. 

Colours were — something else. 

Colours were _bad_. That’s what his mother had chanted that, over and over. They betrayed a man’s heart. They conveyed the truest of natures. 

Everyone had a colour, and for most, it blossomed across your skin at another’s touch, swirling in patterns that reflected your emotion and relationship with the other. They were too dangerous of a tell for Neil to allow people to see: His mother had taught him how to simply wish the explosions of colour across his skin away, until they simply vanished. He was always careful to avoid people even brushing slightly against his skin, mostly out of paranoia.   
He’d watched his father comb through a crowd of people from a distance, grabbing at their bared skin and seeing what colour bloomed, looking for a boy of blue and a woman of red. Neil knew what would happen if he was found: He’d been found too many times already, and soon his borrowed time would catch up with him.

Colours change but not easily though his mother had tried desperately to find a humane way of changing his from blue to something else anyway. 

Nothing worked. 

See, colours only changed in two highly particular situations. Red, black. Red, black. His mother had been red. His father was black. 

Neil’s mother had been hellbent on survival, had ripped out his hair and suffocated him within an inch of his life out of anger and fear, but she couldn’t let him be taken advantage of, like she had. Her only other option was to get Neil to kill out of cold blood but as hard as she tried, he couldn’t, he refused to be like his father. Having the same colour as him splash out over Neil’s skin would be only a win, in his eyes. 

But she’d died. And even with all her efforts, Neil was still blue. 

Now he was apart of a team of people, fractionally as fucked up as him, but certainly up there. Wymack’s neutral grey was interesting enough, and how he’d tattooed it’s pattern of movement up his arms. Abby’s fuchsia seemed a little too bright, but she brightened Wymack and he soothed her.

He watched deep orange curl around Dan Wilds’ dark skin when her fingers laced with Matt’s, the lilac and orange making a chocolate brown that danced across their fingers and wrists, the joy between them evident in their eyes. 

He watched Seth’s deep purple entwine and repel with Allison’s pale pink, reflecting their on and off days. 

Nicky Hemmick’s sunflower yellow splashed vividly across his hands and up his arms when he put his hands on Neil’s shoulders, and he saw the confusion in Nicky’s eyes when he didn’t see any colour on Neil.

Neil only noticed the ocean blue dusting across Aaron’s skin when Nicky grabbed him momentarily, trying to make peace before the quieter twin stormed away. 

Kevin Day’s colour Neil had already known, having been risen in the public eye, green a few shades darker than his eyes. 

Neil still didn’t trust Renee and her shimmering silver, like the cross around her neck and the nail polish on her fingers. Nor did he trust Bee’s pretty mint green. 

Andrew Minyard’s colour was unknown to everyone, even his twin, even Wymack and Bee. He dressed in black head-to-toe, and it didn’t help that he didn’t try to correct people on their assumption that his colour was black, after killing his mother. He merely smiled. Sometimes laughed. 

Neil was not scared of him, even as he became an increasingly large problem. Neil was only scared of the man with bloody hands and the flames of black licking over his taut muscle and unbreakable bones, the terrifying shadows that danced across all of his men’s skin. 

~

Things began happening, and spinning out of Neil’s control: The team, the monsters, the world that now watched him. Removing his contacts, the kiss, the powdery, sugary substance Nicky hid under his tongue, and his evident disappointment when Neil’s colour still refused to show. Slurred voices and angry accusations, pushing and shoving Neil right out of his comfort zone which was already the size of a pinhole. 

Riko Moriyama, and the deep, almost black colour that Neil took a moment to realise was purple. The increasingly tension in Kevin’s shoulders and fists as Neil berated Riko on live television. Watching how Kevin’s deep green reacted so negatively when Riko pushed him up against the wall, clutching his injured hand against his chest. 

It didn’t fix itself, and Neil got more stupid, the niceties of being something luring him into a trap. Neil watched Kevin unfold in Riko’s presence once more, when the cameras weren’t pointed on them but a slightly smaller crowd of athletes’ eyes were. Riko grabbed his hand and his certainly faltered when Neil’s blue refused to come out and betray him. 

It worsened. 

It wasn’t losing to the Ravens, or the loud ticking of Neil’s clock as his end loomed closer. It wasn’t Neil watching Kevin’s hopes for Neil plummeting and crashing into the ground.

It was Andrew. 

It was the blood splattered across his skin and hands. 

It was Neil realising that it wasn’t blood—not most of it. 

He was laughing, grinning, with a gash on his head. Neil’s racket had crushed Drake’s skull in at Aaron’s hands, and Neil watched Aaron gasp in horror at Andrew’s skin. His own ocean blue swirled around, but Andrew’s red was vibrant and horrific in the darkness of the room. 

Andrew was red. His mother had been red. _Why red?_ Neil didn’t understand it and hated it. He hated the colour red more and more, every time he saw Andrew’s hands that were shaking even as he smiled. 

_Black for murder, red for rape._

The horror didn’t stop there, though.

Andrew gripped Neil’s arm—and Neil finding a blue handprint left in his wake. It stayed there, long after they’d all been escorted by the police, long after Neil had retrieved Andrew’s knives. Nicky had willingly given his jumper to Neil, asking for no reason. Neil checked and checked and checked. 

Andrew left. Neil told Andrew to trust him: He pushed Andrew’s bare hand up under his shirt, feeling the scars that marred his skin. Andrew immediately tugged the sleeve of his jumper down to hide the red blossoming on his hand. 

“What colour are you?” He asked. 

Neil pulled up his sleeve, with the print of Andrew’s hand still wrapped around his forearm. 

Andrew swayed on his feet, smiling. “Funny. I guess it will have to do.”

~

Jean Moreau was red, too. 

~

Andrew came back, and Neil had scars to show and stories to tell. 

Andrew came back, with keys and confessions to give. 

Together, they traded truths. And kisses. Neil watched, terrified: He’d never seen his skin so alive with colour like this. These streaks of sky blue that he couldn’t control when Andrew’s fingertips trailed over his skin, butterfly-light. Or whole canvases, splashes of acrylic and oil when Andrew gripped his bicep, his shoulder, his hip, the back of his neck. 

And as much as Neil was blue, Andrew was red. The red seemed softer, less of a harsh truth and more of a warning. Neil watched it blossom, raspberry red, when his hands slipped just out of Andrew’s hair and onto his neck: He was pushed up against the wall, and there was colour _everywhere_. His skin was on fire, and the tension wound up in his muscles had never felt so pleasurable before. 

Andrew hadn’t noted or cared Neil’s slip of hands: He was so overwhelmed by _Neil_. Good for nothing Neil, who’s colour was so beautiful as it swirled across angry red scars. He tried not to notice how well red and blue worked together, because Neil was not an object of permanence. He _wasn’t._

And when Neil slumped against the wall, spent, his colours were still alive on his skin, dancing like waves. 

Andrew vanished, having curled his hands into fists and stuffing them into his pockets, the only visible skin apart from his neck and face, of which he couldn’t do much to hide. 

Neil knew he had to hide it: He concentrated on the blue tint to his lips until they vanished, not daring to look himself in the eyes in the reflection of the window. The curls that betrayed his above the collar of his neck slowly retreated unlike the patterns on his arms, snatching the jumper Andrew threw at him and hiding his wrists and forearms, curling his fingers in the sleeves. 

Andrew didn’t look at his again. Neil left. 

~

Neil wasn’t prepared for it. They’d been talking, talking, talking for the extent of the ride up. They were versing the Belmonte Bearcats, and Kevin said Neil should be worried but he wasn’t. 

He was more concerned about the anticlimactic 0 sent to his inbox earlier. 

But nothing could drag his immediate focus from Andrew, sitting bathed in golden light, and Neil wanted to ask: _What colour were you before they changed?_

He didn’t ask: Instead, he reasoned with Andrew to let him go. 

They were getting off the bus for a break and Neil sat down momentarily next to Andrew, offering his hand. Andrew stared at it, until Neil moved it over Andrew’s wrist. 

“You want them knowing?” If Neil touched Andrew, it would be difficult to mask the results. 

“They won’t.” Neil inclined his head. “Yes or no?”

Andrew kissed him, and Neil’s hand fell on top of Andrew’s. Neil drew back to look, because he loved the red tint to Andrew’s lips that made them look kiss-swollen. But they were no longer red: They were—startlingly—purple. 

“Andrew.” Neil muttered. 

He was staring at Neil’s lips. They looked at their hands together. 

Purple, twisting around their fingers and dancing over the backs of their hands, streaking across the creases in their palms. 

Neil didn’t know what this meant. He’d heard of it, but he couldn’t comprehend—it was impossible— colours only mixed when—

Andrew withdrew, but Neil could see his throat working, and in the gap between his armbands and sleeves, purple was twisting and twirling across Andrew’s fair skin. 

Andrew was screaming at Neil to _go_ , despite having said nothing. Neil went, pulling his jersey on as he hurried down the bus lane. The strange tingling in his lips vanished: Neil only glanced at his reflection in the rear-view mirror of the bus once to make sure.

“Don’t think about it too hard about the game, Neil.” Wymack’s voice drew him out of his head. He thought Neil was worked up about the game. “Don’t let Kevin get to you. You’ve got this.”

Neil just nodded. 

~

Blood and bruises masked the colour on his skin. His father’s fingertips dragged across the cuts in his cheek, watching how the blue fought away from his father’s touch, violently repelled. Once upon a time, his father’s own colour was blue: Long before he’d met Neil’s mother. Now it was black, black like slick oil, and it was disgusting. No one of his inner circle had their original colours on their skin: They all wore the black of killing out of cold blood. 

Lola, in the car, had been mesmerised by his skin, the blue streaks rushing around frantically with fear. “Still so innocent, junior. Still so _alive_.” A wicked smile: Her hands were coated with it, so black it looked like a shadow, looking like she’d thrusted her hands into black blood. “Not for long, no?” 

He wondered, underneath the excruciating pain of dash-board lighters on his cheek, if they would attempt to change his colour before his death, to take away something he’d always kept to himself, something that he’d only just started to accept was his. It would be unlikely that they’d let him kill someone because he would stall just to waste time. It left only one other option, and Lola wouldn’t hesitate if asked. 

When they shoved him into the boot and Lola threw her leg over his own, he thought _this is it_. But nothing happened. 

It was a big show, when your colours changed, so it made sense that they would wait for the audience. The pain of changing was agonising, apparently. If there was any more pain he could put his son through, the Butcher would do it. Slice his hamstrings, thread his muscles, pinch and snap his nerves.

Then everything was over. His father was dead. His uncle crouched down and barely recognised his nephew, but for the blue that blossomed across his ruined wrists under Stuart’s fingertips, the blue that Mary hated so much. 

_“Nathaniel?”_

~  
The first time the Foxes saw that Neil was blue was Andrew’s hand, clasped on the back of Neil’s neck when they’d been kneeling in front of each other in that horrid motel room in Baltimore, FBI agents right up their asses and everyone on edge. 

It was almost invisible. 

It was undeniably beautiful. 

Something between Andrew and Neil changed. 

Neil was exhausted as he poured out every last secret to Andrew, to the FBI, and then again to the Foxes, every truth they deserved, every lie they’d believed. He slept, completely still and somehow, soundly, and Andrew’s hand didn’t move from resting over his own bandaged hand. Underneath the bandages and across Andrew’s palm was purple as they fell asleep. 

Colours. The colour painted across your skin was you, the best reflection of you that it could be. It changed, when marred upon by only awful deeds. 

Never had Neil heard of it reversing. 

But.

Neil’s arms were around Andrew’s neck, kissing sticky lips, and the shower head was spluttering over them. He’d finished already and slid to the ground. Andrew was steady but desperate over him, and Neil only withdrew momentarily to hear Andrew’s hiccup of a gasp. 

Gold. 

Gold, everywhere. 

Blue and gold, swirling and blending and melting together. 

Neil couldn’t, and knew he shouldn’t, say anything. All he could think was _“Oh.”_

Colours were something else. They were a part of you. They could be taken away. But they could also be given back.

“Andrew.” 

Andrew opened his eyes, and saw. Neil understood the sudden rigidity and slipped out of the shower and closed the bathroom door behind him. 

“Something wrong, Neil?” Matt gently laid a hand on Neil’s shoulder to avoid putting Neil through any more pain than he had to, and pointedly looked at the blue just peeping out from underneath. But he said nothing, and smiled. 

Neil shook his head. 

~

Years later, they will hold hands. The evening will be that shade of twilight that gave everything a blue tint, and the lit cigarette’s will glow gold as it’s held between Andrew’s fingers. They’ll both be watching the gold and blue swirl around to make a shimmering turquoise on their joined hands. 

Andrew will the first one to look up from the mesmerising and forever changing patterns and say “Thank you.”

Neil will look up, understand, and smile. 

Colours weren’t such a bad thing after all.

**Author's Note:**

> i wish i could draw this


End file.
